Ticket to Nowhere?

Lemos Stein for Wall Street Journal

Airlines can cut back greenhouse-gas emissions by using blends of biofuels. If, that is, the ingredients are available.

The aviation industry is scrambling to find ways of reducing its carbon emissions, including testing biofuels in commercial airliners.

Tests so far show biofuels work as well in the air as on the ground. (In other words, they work.) But a host of issues stand in the way of large-scale production of such fuels for aviation, posing economic, environmental and logistical questions that have no easy solutions.

For example, 85% of the cost of jet fuel made from natural oils is the feedstock, or raw materials, says Jennifer Holmgren, general manager for UOP LLC's Renewable Energy & Chemicals business, a Des Plaines, Ill., refining technology developer. But while a gallon of crude oil costs about 90 cents, suppliers of exotic oils say that the three main choices being considered for aviation fuel -- using oils from the jatropha and camelina plants, and from algae -- cost about $7 a gallon, $3 a gallon and more than $20 a gallon, respectively.

Fuels based purely on oils from these plants performed well in test flights by airlines and jet-engine makers in December and January, says Ms. Holmgren. UOP, a unit of Honeywell International Inc., refined the fuel for the New Zealand Air, Continental Airlines and Japan Airlines flights. When burned, the oils produce less soot and particulate matter than regular jet fuel, Ms. Holmgren says. Also, cultivating and refining the oilseeds produces 50% less greenhouse-gas emissions than regular jet-fuel production, she says.

The aviation industry is under pressure to study alternative fuels because, though responsible for only about 3% of global carbon-dioxide emissions, the industry faces a possible emissions cap by the European Union in coming years. The International Air Transport Association has set a goal for its 230 members to use a blend of 10% alternative fuels by 2017. Commercial airplanes will burn 67 billion gallons of jet fuel in 2009, down from about 70 billion in both 2008 and 2007, according to the association. By 2017, assuming demand for flights rises, considerably more than seven billion gallons of biofuel is likely to be needed to meet the industry's 10% target.

But the amount of land currently needed to grow even seven billion gallons of oilseed suggests that some areas now used to grow food would be converted for fuel crops, experts say. Moreover, any environmental benefits from reducing carbon-dioxide emissions would probably be partially offset by the additional use of irrigation and fertilizers.

Algae Bloom
Of the three, algae holds the most promise because of its energy yield and ability to grow in ponds and waste water in desert areas, eliminating the land-use dilemma. But the technology to produce enough algae to make billions of gallons of fuel is, at best, five to eight years away, industry experts say. In the meantime, some scientists and agricultural economists believe jatropha and camelina have growing traits and potential for yield improvement that can overcome concerns about land use.

Camelina is a small, oil-rich seed that grows in a flowering plant related to rapeseed and mustard. It grows well in dry areas with fewer applications of fertilizers and herbicides.

Camelina seed yields in Montana can reach an average of 1,000 pounds per acre on dry land, says Duane Griffith, extension farm management specialist at Montana State University, in Bozeman. As the plant has 40% oil content, one acre yields 400 pounds of oil, or 54 gallons, annually. But to grow enough camelina to produce seven billion gallons of biofuel would take 130 million acres. By contrast, there are 470 million acres of arable land in the U.S.

Jatropha, a shrub that grows on marginal land in the tropics, has drawn the attention of development economists because of its potential to lift communities in Africa and Southeast Asia from poverty if it becomes a major feedstock for biofuel. So far, it's grown on small farms, so yields vary from region to region.

New York-based Terasol Energy Inc., which provided the jatropha oil refined by UOP for the test flights, says farmers in India and Tanzania currently can harvest just over two metric tons of seed per acre without fertilizers or herbicides, yielding about 242 gallons of oil per acre. Sanjay Pringle, president of Terasol, which is developing alternative oilseed crops for biofuel and for specialty-chemical industries, says India has potentially identified 27 million acres and Brazil about 19 million acres that could be used to grow jatropha.


Lloyd MillerDevelopers of both camelina and jatropha say that genetic enhancement of the plants will increase yields, just as corn yields have improved significantly in recent decades. That will reduce the amount of land needed for planting.

No Protection
But even if a market for these crops emerges, farmers won't easily take a gamble on a new crop, scientists and academics say.

First of all, it's a "a big risk" because these crops aren't supported by U.S. Department of Agriculture loan guarantee or insurance programs, says Ron Pate, principal member of the Energy, Resources and Systems Analysis Center at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M. "The problem is that we don't have that much experience with these crops on large-scale farming and agronomics," he says.

There is also the issue of possible collateral damage to the environment when logistics and transportation are considered. To move the crops from remote areas in countries with poor infrastructure will take a lot of fuel.

Even more daunting for biofuel crop developers is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's proposal to include indirect land use in its assessment of greenhouse-gas emissions for biofuel. Indirect land use refers to how the displacement of food crops for fuel crops in a region can induce changes in land use elsewhere. Since carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere every time unused land is converted into a crop, the EPA argues that indirect land use alters the emissions balance of biofuels.

Powering Up
Comparing selected raw materials that can be made into aviation fuel

Cost/gallon Gallons/acre BTUs/gallon BTUs/acre (millions)
Algae $20.00 3,500 130,000 455
Camelina 3.00 54 185,000 10
Jatropha 7.00 200 140,000 28
Crude oil 0.90 -- 138,000 --

Note: Gallons/acre figures are for annual production. BTUs=British thermal units. Sources: Honeywell International Inc.; Lew Fulton, International Energy Agency; National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Department of Energy; Alice L. Pilgeram, David C. Sands et al., Montana State University
Given the challenges of achieving commercial scale for any single oilseed crop, investors and industry experts say the answer may be to develop a catalog of oils instead of picking a single winning crop.

"We very strongly believe that it's a portfolio of correct answers; there will be different plants, different processes, different regional solutions that, for a user, can be interchangeable," says Billy Grover, managing director for environmental strategy at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, which supplied the jets used in the test flights. Commercial Airplanes is a division of Chicago-based Boeing Co.

Meanwhile, although the economics still favor fossil fuels, that may not always be the case.

"If you look at the cost of extracting and producing petroleum, the trend is that it's going higher and higher, it's getting to more expensive sources, while the trend to get the renewable resources is getting cheaper; the trend is the reverse," says Mr. Pringle of Terasol.

—Ms. Lemos Stein is a special writer in Jersey City, N.J., for Clean Technology Insight, a newsletter published by Dow Jones & Co.
Write to Mara Lemos Stein at mara.lemos-stein@dowjones.com